Where Dark Things Sleep
by Devi Lethe
Summary: Bilbo lies awake and dreams of things that can't be.
1. Chapter 1

They say the past is a different country, and they're right. It's a different world, even, governed by laws and driven by forces beyond the present understanding. What was so vital, so necessary, moments or years before is changed, twisted by absence and reflection. Contorted. The past is the shadow of branches cast on your bedroom wall at night that become the claws of wraiths.

They say the future is a no man's land. A place where anything can happen, filled to bursting with a horrible potential. For Thorin Oakenshield, the future has only two paths. He will take back the mountain, or he will die trying. He knows this, knows in his bones like the ring of a chisel striking a clean vein, that there are only two fates for him. He can feel them each time his boot meets new earth, every step drawing them closer. He's wrong, of course, but truth has never been a deterrent for certainty, and it's a little thing, after all. The truth.

The present is the most incomprehensible of all. A horribly raw, real moment in time. The present is chaotic. The present is tangled and Bilbo Baggins never understood that before. Safe in the Shire, the past stretching monotonously behind and the future neatly aligned to come along, each day was the same as the last. For a Hobbit, the present was a largely vestigial fragment of time. Useless, really, because who could ever want to be alone, tired and sore and cold and _bloody, buggering miserable_ in the middle of nowhere? _Who?_

Who, indeed. A fool of a Took, that's who. A bloody, blithering idiot who let himself get talked into an adventure by a ridiculous wizard and a bunch of noisy, messy dwarves. The lot of them loud and obnoxious and so completely unrepentant and… and…

Against his will his mind supplies the rest. Because it's true for all of them. Save one.

In the dark, Bilbo's eyes find him, stalking beyond the edge of the firelight. Thorin. Their leader. Their cause. Stronger than the sword at his side and just as honed. Shaped to a fearsome purpose. No wonder he has no time for soft and untried Hobbits.

And because Bilbo is a particularly foolish fool, none of that stops his brain running. How would it feel to have those gray eyes rake over him with something other than derision? Something hot, like iron, melted down until it was nothing but a molten puddle. Or something cold and glittering. Something pitiless, like his mountain. What would Thorin do if hands found in him the dark, seeking purchase on skin instead of fur and mail?

And if hobbit-soft hands happened to be the ones reaching, would they find their counterparts, calloused and rough where first those hands swung a hammer, but for far too long have gripped a sword?

Bilbo's breath hangs in a scattered cloud, hovering like the memory of touch before it's gone in a puff of wind. And, oh. There it is. The smell of leather and musk layered with the acrid tang of metal, heavy on the back of his tongue. So thick he can taste it, like salt and the stench of granite draped over shoulders that hold the hopes of a people. A smell Bilbo knows, can't forget, _craves_.

Because sometimes, only sometimes, there's a look in Thorin's eye that says he wants Bilbo to prove him wrong. Like Thorin isn't trying to make him quit. Like he's giving him chances to stay, which is so far beyond ridiculous it doesn't bear thinking about. Except, of course, that he is.

What would it mean, if that were true? If those shoulders were weary. If Thorin wasn't a sword but a shield. A cave. A fortress. If he had made himself hard to protect something precious, something locked away. Would he find the ghost of hope in golden brown curls chased with velvet, softer than anything a warrior would have touched in years. Soft as the heart it covers, as the heart that hunts it. Soft as the touch of a clever burglar with a clever mind.

Bilbo watches as he prowls, restless while the others sleep. While Bilbo himself should be sleeping instead of nursing un-Hobbit-like dreams. And it isn't as though it means anything. It's not like it matters. Because hope is only hope, and the world is still the world, and Bilbo Baggins knows he's wrong. He just… wishes he wasn't.

Truth is such a little thing in the face of certainty.


	2. Chapter 2

There are many things Thorin Oakenshield has learned to value in his years of exile. Likewise, there are many things he's learned to scorn. Fickle things like comfort, beauty, finesse. Inessential, useless distractions that hide the truth of the world. A pretty face can mask the ugliest soul, and a soft bed has often meant a dagger in the night. He's grown harder in their absence. Stronger.

Gazing up at the White Orc, his body nothing more than a distant ache, Thorin knows two things: he's _failed_ and he is going to die. The latter is only an after thought, a foregone conclusion. If he's failed he is as good as dead anyway and no mistake. It's only fitting that it be at the hands of the beast that killed his father. A kind of closure. It has the ring of fate.

And then there is Bilbo. Small, sweet-natured Bilbo with his too-large feet and his too-big heart throwing himself bodily between Thorin and his executioner. Standing sword in hand against a foe he cannot possibly hope to beat but from whom he will not run and Thorin is struck to his bones with the knowledge that Bilbo is ready to fight for him, kill for him. Bilbo is ready to _die_ for him and now Bilbo will never go home, either.

Thorin's fault, because he was cruel. Because he can't leave well enough alone. There's a hole in his heart ever since he lost his home and it eats at him, claws at him. Leaves him weak. Thorin is riddled with impurities and he isn't sure even the finest smith could make use of him.

In his ears comes the rush of wind over the screaming and the rasp of feathers. It reminds him of skin sliding across paper. Across velvet. Across dry leather and brass fastenings. Not the worst sound to follow him into the afterlife, he reasons.

He is born up, away, heavenward but as the wind chills his bones, Thorin realizes he's not been released. His days are not yet ended. It's not his time to rest. A minute or an hour later, sun-warmed stone against his back and the sound of feathers rushing away, he finds it somewhere in himself to stand. Where, he cannot say, because he has never felt more humble. Not when he first beheld the Arkenstone, nor when he first met the Gray Wizard, nor even the day he watched his kingdom brought low.

Thorin Oakenshield has learned the value of things in his exile. He's tempered himself with time and hate. But it's not until he's saved by someone soft, someone surrounded by fickle things, that he realizes he hasn't only grown hard and strong. He's grown brittle and rigid and cold.

One Who Could Be Called King, indeed. One who despite the lessons of time and distance has become just as foolish as his father. He should have met his fate in that burning forest. His head should be on a spike at Azog's side, and yet, here he stands. Alive, unspoiled, thanks to one he'd derided and mocked. Thanks to one with a purer heart than his.

And perhaps that is why it's not his place to rest. He knows his debts are high, because when Thorin's fate came for him, Bilbo Baggins chose to stand. It seems the least Thorin can do is stand by his side.

It is not in himself he finds the strength to do it.

In his chest there is a warm, fluttering heat that makes his heart stutter. A feeling he thought could only come from one place, and Thorin fears he may be right. It's one he remembers from nights by hearth fires and his mother's hands carding through his hair. Like his father's eyes before all they sought was glitter. A feeling like safe.

A feeling like _home_.

It doesn't help that Bilbo smiles like it's a gift instead of a burden or that his breath comes quick when Thorin stands near. It does nothing to slake the hunger in his heart when Bilbo looks at him like there is an echo of it in his as well.

He has grown brittle and cannot help but wonder, with fear and hope in equal measure, if it will be Bilbo who shatters him.


End file.
